Bash IF statement: string comparison of command output always false - bash

Hi I'm trying to write a simple bash script to attach to a screen session. If the session is not already started then it will start it and try to attach again.
The problem I'm having is with the if statement; it should compare the output from the screen command with the failure message and if they are equal go on to start the session and attach. But it's always going to the else clause, printing out the error message I was checking against :s
Both strings contain the same thing:
"There is no screen to be attached matching sctest."
but bash thinks they are different...
Here's the bash script, what am I missing?
#!/bin/bash
screenOutput=$(screen -aA -x sctest);
failString="There is no screen to be attached matching sctest.";
if [ "$screenOutput" = "$failString" ]; then
echo "screen session not started. starting now...";
# . ./init.sh
# echo $(screen -aA -x sctest);
else
echo "$screenOutput";
fi

Use set -x (or invoke bash -x yourscript) to print each line as it's evaluated with values expanded in a way that makes hidden characters visible and human-readable.
Most likely, you'll see something like the following:
[ 'There is no screen to be attached matching sctest' = $'There is no screen to be attached matching sctest\r' ]
...with the latter having a \r on the end. This is a carriage-return.
To remove it, you can modify your code like so:
screenOutput=$(screen -aA -x sctest)
screenOutput=${screenOutput%$'\r'}

Related

How to make exception for a bash script with set -ex

I have a bash script that has set -ex, which means the running script will exit once any command in it hits an error.
My use case is that there's a subcommand in this script for which I want to catch its error, instead of making the running script shutdown.
E.g., here's myscript.sh
#!/bin/bash
set -ex
# sudo code here
error = $( some command )
if [[ -n $error ]] ; then
#do something
fi
Any idea how I can achieve this?
You can override the output of a single command
this_will_fail || true
Or for an entire block of code
set +e
this_will_fail
set -e
Beware, however, that if you decide you don't want to use set -e in the script anymore this won't work.
If you want to handle a particular command's error status yourself, you can use as the condition in an if statement:
if ! some command; then
echo 'An error occurred!' >&2
# handle error here
fi
Since the command is part of a condition, it won't exit on error. Note that other than the ! (which negates it, so the then clause will run if the command fails rather than it succeeds), you just include the command directly in the if statement (no brackets, parentheses, etc).
BTW, in your pseudocode example, you seem to be treating it as an error if the command produces any output; usually that's not what you want, and I'm assuming you actually want to test the exit status to detect errors.

How to parse through outputted strings of a custom CLI command in bash script?

I have a custom CLI command that executes and requires user to enter a password. If the password fails authentication, it will echo some message like "Authentication failed" and I would like to see if the outputted string contains some substring like "fail". However, I noticed that capturing the "output" of a command is not giving me the text it echos on the terminal screen. If I would like to read through all the text the command echoed which doesn't technically come into the "output" bucket, how would I go about doing that?
Example:
> custauth
Enter your password:
Checking if password is correct...
Authentication Failed. Please try again
In above example you can see that it doesn't have an "output" but generates text that is displayed to the user. I would like to capture those lines and check for a substring in them rather than its official output
Using $? only gives me the exit code but oftentimes the CLI command can fail gracefully and output 0, so I'll need to read through all the statements it echoed.
The process can be passed initially by checking the status correctly, which is through
#!/bin/bash
# We put here any code that we check for verification
#like list files to fast exapmle
ls
cpstatus=$?
if [ "$cpstatus" == 0 ]; then
echo "complete"
else
echo "not complete"
fi
wait # Until the upper commands is finish
Or if you know what you are achieving, you can check the way out through it, and compare if there is a part of the speech that shows us a specific sentence, for example, if we return a failure, you will add that to the condition
I will attach an example code I wrote to infer the name of the system, for example:
System=$(uname -a) #str=$(command)
Substring ='Linux'
if [[ "$System" == *"$Substring"* ]]; then
echo "Yes is contain $Substring"
fi
I hope the solutions helped you, good luck :)

Loop trough docker output until I find a String in bash

I am quite new to bash (barely any experience at all) and I need some help with a bash script.
I am using docker-compose to create multiple containers - for this example let's say 2 containers. The 2nd container will execute a bash command, but before that, I need to check that the 1st container is operational and fully configured. Instead of using a sleep command I want to create a bash script that will be located in the 2nd container and once executed do the following:
Execute a command and log the console output in a file
Read that file and check if a String is present. The command that I will execute in the previous step will take a few seconds (5 - 10) seconds to complete and I need to read the file after it has finished executing. I suppose i can add sleep to make sure the command is finished executing or is there a better way to do this?
If the string is not present I want to execute the same command again until I find the String I am looking for
Once I find the string I am looking for I want to exit the loop and execute a different command
I found out how to do this in Java, but if I need to do this in a bash script.
The docker-containers have alpine as an operating system, but I updated the Dockerfile to install bash.
I tried this solution, but it does not work.
#!/bin/bash
[command to be executed] > allout.txt 2>&1
until
tail -n 0 -F /path/to/file | \
while read LINE
do
if echo "$LINE" | grep -q $string
then
echo -e "$string found in the console output"
fi
done
do
echo "String is not present. Executing command again"
sleep 5
[command to be executed] > allout.txt 2>&1
done
echo -e "String is found"
In your docker-compose file make use of depends_on option.
depends_on will take care of startup and shutdown sequence of your multiple containers.
But it does not check whether a container is ready before moving to another container startup. To handle this scenario check this out.
As described in this link,
You can use tools such as wait-for-it, dockerize, or sh-compatible wait-for. These are small wrapper scripts which you can include in your application’s image to poll a given host and port until it’s accepting TCP connections.
OR
Alternatively, write your own wrapper script to perform a more application-specific health check.
In case you don't want to make use of above tools then check this out. Here they use a combination of HEALTHCHECK and service_healthy condition as shown here. For complete example check this.
Just:
while :; do
# 1. Execute a command and log the console output in a file
command > output.log
# TODO: handle errors, etc.
# 2. Read that file and check if a String is present.
if grep -q "searched_string" output.log; then
# Once I find the string I am looking for I want to exit the loop
break;
fi
# 3. If the string is not present I want to execute the same command again until I find the String I am looking for
# add ex. sleep 0.1 for the loop to delay a little bit, not to use 100% cpu
done
# ...and execute a different command
different_command
You can timeout a command with timeout.
Notes:
colon is a utility that returns a zero exit status, much like true, I prefer while : instead of while true, they mean the same.
The code presented should work in any posix shell.

How can I start a subscript within a perpetually running bash script after a specific string has been printed in the terminal output?

Specifics:
I'm trying to build a bash script which needs to do a couple of things.
Firstly, it needs to run a third party script that I cannot manipulate. This script will build a project and then start a node server which outputs data to the terminal continually. This process needs to continue indefinitely so I can't have any exit codes.
Secondly, I need to wait for a specific line of output from the first script, namely 'Started your app.'.
Once that line has been output to the terminal, I need to launch a separate set of commands, either from another subscript or from an if or while block, which will change a few lines of code in the project that was built by the first script to resolve some dependencies for a later step.
So, how can I capture the output of the first subscript and use that to run another set of commands when a particular line is output to the terminal, all while allowing the first script to run in the terminal, and without using timers and without creating a huge file from the output of subscript1 as it will run indefinitely?
Pseudo-code:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# This script needs to stay running & will output to the terminal (at some point)
# a string that we need to wait/watch for to launch subscript2
sh subscript1
# This can't run until subscript1 has output a particular string to the terminal
# This could be another script, or an if or while block
sh subscript2
I have been beating my head against my desk for hours trying to get this to work. Any help would be appreciated!
I think this is a bad idea — much better to have subscript1 changed to be automation-friendly — but in theory you can write:
sh subscript1 \
| {
while IFS= read -r line ; do
printf '%s\n' "$line"
if [[ "$line" = 'Started your app.' ]] ; then
sh subscript2 &
break
fi
done
cat
}

Why isn't this command returning to shell after &?

In Ubuntu 14.04, I created the following bash script:
flock -nx "$1" xdg-open "$1" &
The idea is to lock the file specified in $1 (flock), then open it in my usual editor (xdg-open), and finally return to prompt, so I can open other files in sequence (&).
However, the & isn't working as expected. I need to press Enter to make the shell prompt appear again. In simpler constructs, such as
gedit test.txt &
it works as it should, returning the prompt immediately. I think it has to do with the existence of two commands in the first line. What am I doing wrong, please?
EDIT
The prompt is actually there, but it is somehow "hidden". If I issue the command
sudo ./edit error.php
it replies with
Warning: unknown mime-type for "error.php" -- using "application/octet-stream"
Error: no "view" mailcap rules found for type "application/octet-stream"
Opening "error.php" with Geany (application/x-php)
__
The errors above are not related to the question. But instead of __ I see nothing. I know the prompt is there because I can issue other commands, like ls, and they work. But the question remains: WHY the prompt is hidden? And how can I make it show normally?
Why isn't this command returning to shell after &?
It is.
You're running a command in the background. The shell prints a new prompt as soon as the command is launched, without waiting for it to finish.
According to your latest comment, the background command is printing some message to your screen. A simple example of the same thing:
$ echo hello &
$ hello
The cursor is left at the beginning of the line after the $ hello.
As far as the shell is concerned, it's printed a prompt and is waiting a new command. It doesn't know or care that a background process has messed up your display.
One solution is to redirect the command's output to somewhere other than your screen, either to a file or to /dev/null. If it's an error message, you'll probably have to redirect both stdout and `stderr.
flock -nx "$1" xdg-open "$1" >/dev/null 2>&1 &
(This assumes you don't care about the content of the message.)
Another option, pointed out in a comment by alvits, is to sleep for a second or so after executing the command, so the message appears followed by the next shell prompt. The sleep command is executed in the foreground, delaying the printing of the next prompt. A simple example:
$ echo hello & sleep 1
hello
[1] + Done echo hello
$
or for your example:
flock -nx "$1" xdg-open "$1" & sleep 1
This assumes that the error message is printed in the first second. That's probably a valid assumption for you example, but it might not be in general.
I don't think the command is doing what you think it does.
Have you tried to run it twice to see if the lock cannot be obtained the second time.
Well, if you do it, you will see that it doesn't fail because xdg-open is forking to exec the editor. Also if it fails you expect some indication.
You should use something like this
flock -nx "$1" -c "gedit '$1' &" || { echo "ERROR"; exit 1; }

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